OrangeArrows end Friday practice in 11th & 12th

Enrique 12th
By Huw Alban
April 29 2002

OrangeArrows finished practice on Friday just outside the top 10 in 11th and 12th. Both drivers slipped down the order during the first half of the session, but a final effort from the team leapt both cars up the order with only 4/1000ths of a second between each ! A good sign for tomorrows race ?

The fine conditions at the Interlagos circuit continued into the second free practice session. The first 40 minutes of the session were dominated by detail from the rest of the field with no OrangeArrows observations available to this site.

The track condition continues to be dicey though with early spins from Takuma Sato and Rubens Barrichello early on in the session.

Approximately half way through the session dark clouds move in over the circuit, as was forecast, and the temperature dips slightly at Interlagos.

With 20 minutes to go until the end of the session, Enrique Bernoldi's impressive 6th from the first free practice has become 15th, but he manages to improve his position slightly. Team mate Heinz-Harald is stuck in the pit garage at this time with mechanics swarming all over his A23. Frentzen's problems cannot have been too severe as he is soon back out on track and also slightly improves on his times.

As the skies continue to get blacker and blacker, Enrique Bernoldi improves to 11th, but Heinz-Harald Frentzen is still languishing at the back of the grid in 18th. In the final minutes, Ferrari's Michael Schumacher has a massive slide off the circuit but amazingly manages to recover, and Heinz-Harald Frentzen finally gets it together to pinch 11th spot from Bernoldi by 4/1000ths of a second !

The Friday practice sessions are normally used to work on race setup, with the Sunday warm up the final chance for some fine tuning. If this is the case then OrangeArrows are in fine form for the race on Sunday. It'll be interesting to find out why Heinz-Harald Frentzen languished so low on the time sheets until the final minutes of the second session, but we'll have to wait for the team press release to find that one out.